Famed investor backs away from web-obsessed Microsoft

A well-known hedge-fund manager has hit out at Microsoft’s “overaggressive and almost panicky” attempts to plump up its online investments. David Einhorn, president and founder of Greenlight Capital, yesterday accused Microsoft of suffering from “Google-envy” and said he was giving up on investing in the software giant until …

[Gav]

Poor him!

So... very wealthy man complains about actions of other very wealthy man, as it may stop him amassing more money.

<- This icon illustrates my heart bleeding for him (or not).

[Anonymous Coward]

Goldfish thinking

That's right, Mr Ballache. It's the credit crunch which is knocking the MSFT share price down, not at all the fact that your 'vision' of the future is akin to the attention span of a goldfish. Keep talking yourself up, while your share price dives...

Sheesh.

Paris Hilton, because her vision of America in her presidential nomination address (on youtube, of course) is far superior to Ballache's vision of Microshaft.

[Rob]

Double standards

Like David Einhorn is a morally just person, isn't part of the financial meltdown due to these financial people/companies short sellin and such like.

At what point do we get justice and these people get some sort of punishment, hefty whack across the knuckles at the least (with a large stick with rusty nails attached, possibly coated in diphtheria as well for good measure).

[Stu]

Now why couldn't he . . .

. . . just say he's pulling out because Windows Vista is crap, and wont run well on kit more than four years old.

I'm waiting for somebody to put the boot into 'MSFT' properly over that one.

.

@ElReg - Can we have Ballmer heaven and hell icons now please?

[Jimmy Floyd]

If he was any sort of hedge fund manager he'd short it

The whole point of a hedge fund is ... to hedge. So if he sees MSFT going down the pan why doesn't he just short-sell it and make money that way?

Perhaps because it's far riskier to short a stock, with potentially reduced reward, and he isn't actually that convinced of his own opinion.

The alien, because I can't understand what I'm doing writing in support of Bill's Baby.

[Martin Edwards]

Money, money, money

Bollocks to the lot of it.

[Jesse]

RE: Double standards

What makes you think that this guy is responsible for the current financial meltdown let alone short selling?

[ratfox]

Now what do you want to bet...

He's currently short-selling microsoft?

If you're famous and people listen when you criticize, you might as well profit from it...

[David Kelly]

Monkey Boy

Steve Ballmer is the George Bush of the IT world.

[John]

I think he's wrong!

Microsoft are actually in a very strong position relative to their stock price. They still have no competitors in the OS or Office markets with 90%. (I use a Mac so I'm no MS lover).

Strong online with .NET.

Game business has been a huge success when you consider the challenges facing them with the success of PS2.

The stock price has simply been a knee jerk reaction to the perceived impression of Vista (untrue btw - it's pretty good) and the success of Apple (it will never be a mainstream pc business as it doesn't even want that - it likes the high margins).

Personally if I had a load of money, I would wait for it to bottom out (due to the current economically climate) and then buy buy buy buy. Same with a load of the banks and everything.

For real investor this is when the real money gets made and I wouldn't even be surprised if this guy is looking to drive the price even lower so he can buy it himself.

[Heff]

M$ shares tank....

well, when they make a lame duck like Vista which in the end they can barely force OEMs to sell, and eventually round out their core offering by prettymuch abandoning it and annoucing Windows 7 will be The One To Watch™, is it any wonder people are going "wtf, gimme my money back".

Microsofts bizarre and idiotic web investment is laughable; they're not going to be able to compete with google unless they throw googles revenue and capital at it, and fundamentally change famously industry-poor working conditions for basic staff out of the window. Live! search! its a gogle compe... wait, not using it? um, ok. Gmal gives you 2 gig? you can have 250meg on hotmail! eventually. um. wait a sec. How abut that aero desktop? whaddaya mean theres a class action lawsuit over the action we took to force OEMs to lie about how well their hardware could run vista?

whats next, competeing with Sun and IBM for Big Boxes? maybe making chips of its own? how about Microsoft Music or Microsoft Bookstore? we'd laugh openly if MS tried any of these things, but for some reason competing wth google on its own turf with a fraction of the funding and understanding is supposed to be tolerated by shareholders in a marketwhere they stil own an effective monopoly on Operating systems?*

Ballmer : GTFO.

XP SP3. 98 interface, NTFS file system, NT toolset in the background if you need it. perfect. why would I want to fuck with that? the Vista-exclusive content? which was... uhm, for games... Shadowrun? yeah. i remember how people rushed out to buy that lemon, too. XD

IT? because I think Microsoft isnt sure what it does anymore. Maybe I should ask Seinfeld?

*blahblahlinuxBSDOSX etc. m sure you're all very nerdy fanboys, but you're in a very very tiny market share. just a really vocal one. please deal with it.

[Matt Bradley]

Showing his ignorance

"We [...] wish MSFT focused on its core strength: software. "

Haha.

[Svein Skogen]

Did I miss something?

So he's basically accusing Steve Ballmer of the hideous crime of being concerned about more things than just making money? He's accusing Mr Ballmer of actually having a conscience?

1) Not being a greedy SOB hardly qualifies as a crime.

2) Accusing Mr. Ballmer of not being a greedy SOB is false accusations bordering on slander.

//Svein

[Rob]

@Jesse

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that he was soley responsible for the financial meltdown, by all means apologise to him for me next time you speak to him.

Thanks